Bug #49738 for CPAN: Untar on Solaris fails with native OS tar

Wed Sep 16 09:34:45 2009 mark.phillips [...] rbs.com - Ticket created

Subject:	Untar on Solaris fails with native OS tar
Date:	Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:34:08 +0100
To:	<bugs-CPAN [...] rt.cpan.org>
From:	<mark.phillips [...] rbs.com>

Hi, This was a bug against a 1.93 release, that was fixed in 1.94 - but appears to be broken again in 1.9402. If you're using the native tar on Solaris 10, the CPAN tarball cannot be untarred due to a file name length issue. Using gnu tar works fine, but that isn't always on a system. Can whatever changed between 1.94 and 1.9402 be fixed please? Thanks Mark Phillips UNIX Engineer RBS Global Banking & Markets Bankside 3, 90-100 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SW, United Kingdom Office: +44 20 3361 0902 *********************************************************************************** The Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Registered in Scotland No 90312. Registered Office: 36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh EH2 2YB. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer. Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure. The Royal Bank of Scotland plc does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmission of viruses, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that the onward transmission, opening or use of this message and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data. No responsibility is accepted by The Royal Bank of Scotland plc in this regard and the recipient should carry out such virus and other checks as it considers appropriate. Visit our website at www.rbs.com ***********************************************************************************

Wed Sep 16 10:06:51 2009 dagolden [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

The only significant change is that a higher version of Archive::Tar is required. (1.50 vs 1.00) Perhaps you don't have 1.50 and CPAN fell back to the system tar. What version of Archive::Tar do you have installed? If you upgrade it, does the problem go away? Also, please note that in CPAN configuration, you can specify which tar binary to use. From the CPAN shell: Show quoted text

cpan> o conf init tar

(Perhaps on Solaris we need to ensure that the system tar is not used by default.) -- David

Wed Sep 16 10:06:52 2009 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Wed Sep 16 10:07:14 2009 dagolden [...] cpan.org - Severity Normal added

Wed Sep 16 10:57:04 2009 mark.phillips [...] rbs.com - Correspondence added

Subject:	RE: [rt.cpan.org #49738] Untar on Solaris fails with native OS tar
Date:	Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:56:41 +0100
To:	<bug-CPAN [...] rt.cpan.org>
From:	<mark.phillips [...] rbs.com>

Hi David, Show quoted text

> The only significant change is that a higher version of Archive::Tar is > required. (1.50 vs 1.00) Perhaps you don't have 1.50 and CPAN fell back to > the system tar.

Show quoted text

> What version of Archive::Tar do you have installed? If you upgrade it, does > the problem go away?

I don't have Archive::Tar at all, so that will be why it used the OS tar. I'm just discussing the issue with mst on freenode [I'm phips] - let me test with Archive::Tar and see how that goes. Get back to you shortly. Thanks, --Mark *********************************************************************************** The Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Registered in Scotland No 90312. Registered Office: 36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh EH2 2YB. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer. Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure. The Royal Bank of Scotland plc does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmission of viruses, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that the onward transmission, opening or use of this message and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data. No responsibility is accepted by The Royal Bank of Scotland plc in this regard and the recipient should carry out such virus and other checks as it considers appropriate. Visit our website at www.rbs.com ***********************************************************************************

Wed Sep 16 14:51:26 2009 ANDK [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

You probably want to switch to 1.94_51. The critical path length in Solaris tar is 100 characters and in 1.9402 we reach that due to the "02" in the root directory. In 1.94_51 I have changed the directory layout so we only reach 93 bytes in the longest path.

Thu Sep 17 06:28:56 2009 mark.phillips [...] rbs.com - Correspondence added

Subject:	RE: [rt.cpan.org #49738] Untar on Solaris fails with native OS tar
Date:	Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:28:32 +0100
To:	<bug-CPAN [...] rt.cpan.org>
From:	<mark.phillips [...] rbs.com>

Show quoted text

> <URL: https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=49738 > > > You probably want to switch to 1.94_51. > > The critical path length in Solaris tar is 100 characters and in 1.9402 we > reach that due to the "02" in the root directory. In 1.94_51 I have changed > the directory layout so we only reach 93 bytes in the longest path.

Hey Andreas, Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look. Incidentally, Dave Golden and a few others were looking at the issue yesterday on #toolchain, I gather somebody took the move to include a message that basically says 'use gnu tar'. That's not the best approach in my mind; quite often in banks there isn't the option to install gnu tar, so you're stuck with the Solaris default. The better option is to try to keep the paths short enough to work with the default OS tar. I'm quite happy to be notified of any pending package releases and test on Solaris if required. Cheers, --Mark [freenode: phips] *********************************************************************************** The Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Registered in Scotland No 90312. Registered Office: 36 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh EH2 2YB. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer. Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure. The Royal Bank of Scotland plc does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmission of viruses, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that the onward transmission, opening or use of this message and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data. No responsibility is accepted by The Royal Bank of Scotland plc in this regard and the recipient should carry out such virus and other checks as it considers appropriate. Visit our website at www.rbs.com ***********************************************************************************

Thu Sep 17 07:34:33 2009 dagolden [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Subject:	Re: [rt.cpan.org #49738] Untar on Solaris fails with native OS tar
Date:	Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:33:49 -0400
To:	bug-CPAN [...] rt.cpan.org
From:	David Golden <dagolden [...] cpan.org>

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:28 AM, mark.phillips@rbs.com via RT <bug-CPAN@rt.cpan.org> wrote: Show quoted text

> Incidentally, Dave Golden and a few others were looking at the issue yesterday > on #toolchain, I gather somebody took the move to include a message that > basically says 'use gnu tar'. That's not the best approach in my mind; quite > often in banks there isn't the option to install gnu tar, so you're stuck with > the Solaris default. The better option is to try to keep the paths short > enough to work with the default OS tar. > > I'm quite happy to be notified of any pending package releases and test on > Solaris if required.

For what it's worth, the text suggests gnu tar *or* Archive::Tar. The warning, verbatim: WARNING: Many CPAN distributions were archived with GNU tar and some of them may be incompatible with Solaris tar. We respectfully suggest you configure CPAN to use a GNU tar instead ("o conf init tar") or install a recent Archive::Tar instead; Keeping paths short is ideal, but it's hard to enforce across all of CPAN. Your best bet might be to join the CPAN Testers project and help catch problem releases as they happen. http://www.cpantesters.org/ -- David